quotations about global warming
One very simple truth about Global Warming is this, that it will spare nobody, however rich, mighty and powerful we think we are.
MICHAEL S. BAROI
"Bishop of London to Lead Climate Change Service", Christian Today, November 3, 2006
The planet will continue to cook.
PAUL KRUGMAN
Awake!, November 2011
Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.
RACHEL CARSON
Silent Spring
In 1896, a lonely Swedish scientist discovered global warming--as a theoretical concept, which most other experts declared implausible. In the 1950s, a few scientists in California discovered global warming--as a possibility, a risk that might perhaps come to pass in a remote future. In 2001, an extraordinary organization mobilizing thousands of scientists around the world discovered global warming--as a phenomenon that had measurably begun to affect the weather and was liable to get much worse. That was when we got the report from the termite inspector.
SPENCER R. WEART
preface, The Discovery of Global Warming
The bulk of scientists are pretty straight about saying this is a probability distribution. And right now our best guess is that we're expecting warming on the order of a few degrees in the next century. It's our best guess. We do not rule out the catastrophic 5 degrees or the mild half or one degree. And the special interests, ..... from deep ecology groups grabbing the 5 degrees as if it's the truth, or the coal industry grabbing the half degree and saying, "Oh, we're going to end up with negligible change and CO2's a fertilizer," and then spinning that as if that's the whole story--that's the difference between what goes on in the scientific community and what goes on in the public debate.
STEPHEN H. SCHNEIDER
PBS interview
There are very few objections to the theory as a whole; everyone in the scientific community agrees that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is on the rise, and almost everyone believes that it cannot help having some effect. To declare, as some editorialists have done, that the warming has not yet appeared and therefore the theory is wrong is like arguing that a woman hasn't yet given birth and therefore isn't pregnant.
BILL MCKIBBEN
The End of Nature
I have not seen Al Gore's movie.
DICK CHENEY
ABC interview, Feb. 23, 2007
Global warming must be seen as an economic and security threat.
KOFI ANNAN
interview, Jun. 23, 2009
Last night I watched the weather channel, as is my habit. Elsewhere in the world there are floods: roiling brown water, bloated cows floating by, survivors huddled on rooftops. Thousands have drowned. Global warming is held accountable: People must stop burning things up, it is said. Gasoline, oil, whole forests. But they won't stop. Greed and hunger lash them on, as usual.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Blind Assassin
Avoiding a planet-changing global warming catastrophe is why we urgently need to transform the global energy system to a carbon-neutral one. The clock is ticking. Absent the fossil fuel greenhouse this transformation could be deferred to the 22nd century or later.
MARTIN HOFFERT
interview, Aug. 22, 2007
The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.... A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system.... Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming.
POPE FRANCIS
Laudato Si, May 24, 2015
The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor.
POPE FRANCIS
Laudato Si, May 24, 2015
It's quite amazing to me. I don't mind talking about skeptics, but there are a very small number of them, and I sometimes wonder why the media, in some perverse sense of fair play, seem compelled to give the same amount of air time or newspaper space to half a dozen skeptics as to thousands of scientists who would essentially agree with the consensus. But although this will contribute to that imbalance, I'm willing to talk a little bit about skeptics. Most skeptics don't actually do research. They comment in a highly selective way on research that other people do. Their own research tends to be very limited, and limited to a very few processes. You don't get anything like a balanced view from skeptics. They tend, as a group, to approach the problem rather like lawyers, making the best case for a client who has a preconceived position, rather than like scientists, which is to examine the climate system with the idea of figuring out how nature works, not to substantiate a preconception that one comes in the door with.
RICHARD C. J. SOMERVILLE
PBS interview
A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.
SARAH PALIN
Newsmax, Sep. 2008
I don't like being called a denier because deniers don't believe in facts. There are no facts linking the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming there are only predictions based on complex computer models.
DAVID BELLAMY
"The Global Warming Myth", Frontier Centre for Public Policy, November 21, 2007
The danger is that global warming may become self-sustaining, if it has not done so already. The melting of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps reduces the fraction of solar energy reflected back into space, and so increases the temperature further. Climate change may kill off the Amazon and other rain forests, and so eliminate once one of the main ways in which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere. The rise in sea temperature may trigger the release of large quantities of carbon dioxide, trapped as hydrides on the ocean floor. Both these phenomena would increase the greenhouse effect, and so global warming further. We have to reverse global warming urgently, if we still can.
STEPHEN HAWKING
ABC News interview, Aug. 16, 2006
It's freezing and snowing in New York--we need global warming!
DONALD TRUMP
Twitter post, November 7, 2012